The Theater: End of a Run?

British playgoers have never been allowed to see the complete Victoria
Regina, Broadway hit of 1935-36, because some of its characters
represent living royalty. They missed the Negro miracle play, The Green
Pastures, because its chief character was De Lawd. Officially, they
never saw Manhattan's long-running Tobacco Road because of its shady
morals.

These decisionsand similar ones involving, at one time or another,
Shakespeare's King Lear, Wilde's Salome and Gilbert & Sullivan's The
Mikadowere taken for British playgoers by the Lord Chamberlain who,
along with such ancient duties as escorting the king to & from the
royal carriage, has acted as Britain's...